You know a film is in trouble when, while listening to the DVD commentary
track, the director admits he hasn’t got a clue what the title means. That’s
exactly what director Stephen Frears admits on the commentary track of the DVD
for Dirty Pretty Things, an oddly overpraised film from 2003. Why it was
so overpraised I can only surmise as critics being tired of the same old
Hollywood pap that passes for thrillers. I say this because DPT is ostensibly a
thriller, except that it’s not. In short, it’s a muddle of a film about a
Nigerian political refugee & doctor named Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) in London
who’s running from a false charge of murdering his wife in his homeland. He
takes several odd jobs- cab driving in the daylight & hotel front desk
receptionist at night.

Then, he makes a grisly discovery straight out of Urban Legends 101- the
head of the hotel’s bellmen, Señor Juan (Sergi Lopez), is running an organ
transplant ring for illegal immigrants, who exchange kidneys for fake ID
documents. A toilet stuffed with a human heart clues him in. That anyone smart
enough to organize & succeed with such a ring would be dumb enough to try to
flush a human heart is merely the 1st in a series of unbelievable
plot twists. The villain, Juan, is so over the top in his scenery chewing
villainy that the film quickly becomes a comic book. Of course, there has to be
a love interest in a comic book, & Okwe is living with a maid at the hotel,
an illegal from Turkey named Senay (Audrey Tautou). Tautou, so wonderful in Amelie,
is miscast here as a Turk. Yes, she’s fascinating & sexy to watch, but her
character has no real purpose save to show that Okwe is a sensitive man- a point
the rest of the film makes. Eventually she loses her virginity to Juan, who
blackmails her for sex & money in exchange for a visa do she can live with
relatives in New York. In retaliation, she & Okwe drug him before he can
steak her organs, & end up taking Juan’s organs, with the help of another
stereotype- a hooker with a heart of gold named Juliette (Sophie Okonedo).

The screenplay is a mess, at times trying to be ‘realistic’, a social
screed, a thriller, & a love story, with none of them meshing with the
others. At film’s end Senay & Okwe part at the airport, but there is no
love scene, no payoff, & I suppose that the writers thought this would be
‘realistic’, but given that the rest of the film is so unrealistic, it only
heightens the film’s poor nature. Ejiofor & Tautou do as much as they can
with what little they’re given, but the film’s a total ‘So what?’

The screenplay is so poorly written that you can see events coming many
minutes before they happen- such as Okwe & Senay’s turning the tables on
Juan, or knowing Senay will bite the dick off her sweatshop supervisor after the
1st time he forces her to fellate him to avoid immigration officials.
Which points up another pointless plot device- 2 bumbling immigration officials.
1st, they harass Senay at her apartment, thinking that they will
catch her with an illegal boarder (why this is illegal is never explained),
then they try to catch her working at the hotel (also illegal- although why
they would not want immigrants to contribute to society nor support themselves
is a mystery), & then at the sweatshop, yet if they know where she lives
it would be easy to just follow her & catch her working- no?

Another unrealistic plot contrivance is that Okwe has a pal Gou Yi
(Benedict Wong) who works in the London morgue, which conveniently allows him
access to a plethora of drugs he needs throughout the film. This is the
character’s only purpose in the film- thus a mere contrivance. These &
many other shortfallings in the film are due to the poor screenplay by Steve
Knight. No cliché, coincidence, nor contrivance is too banal, forced, nor
precious in this script. Frears, as director, should have tidied things up a
bit. A similar tale he directed- The Grifters- was a much better piece
because of its screenplay, giving proof to the maxim that films always succeed
or fail on the strength of their story, not the directorial flourishes.

As for Tautou- she is 1 of those oddly attractive actresses that you
cannot help but look at. But, her character is not for a moment believable as a
Turk nor Moslem. Her reasons for immigrating seem shallow- she’s not a
political refugee, her ‘faith’ is but a contrivance so we can see her abused
by her sweatshop boss & then Juan, her cultural references seem shallow-
such as her chewing on plants that stimulate, & her accent is phony. As for
Ejiofor- his character is a typical Good Negro role that would have starred
Sidney Poitier a few decades back. His actions have little justification, save
as crusader, yet given his tenable position, it seems silly that he would risk
all to save total strangers- even Senay, if we accept that he wants to boink
her. The revelation of his being wanted for murdering his wife, although false,
also seems forced for no reason. It would have been better just to have a
regular hotel clerk find the heart & lead into an adventure. As silly as
that would be it would at least be grounded in reality. DPT, as it is, is just a
lark- but 1 with no uplift.

Why, as example, doesn’t Okwe just anonymously tip off the cops? Why
would Senay need her passport to America to say she’s from Italy? She’d
still be an illegal- no? &, finally, if 1 were gonna base a thriller about a
hotel clerk finding a human heart in a toilet couldn’t there be a far better
explanation for how it got there? Although not a great film I thought of Roman
Polanski’s film from the mid-80s, Frantic, where Harrison Ford is cast
as a man whose wife is suddenly kidnapped in France. He goes through many
travails but they are all believable & he is far from the super-hero
characters he’s made a career out of. The difference in the 2 films is that Frantic
was well-written, & directed by a man with vision, not just a typical hack.

As for the DVD, there is not much in the way of extras, but the film is
in good visual & aural shape. As for the commentary, the only notable thing
revealed is how clueless Frears was about his own movie. Then, again, I guess it
is refreshing for an artist to actually ‘fess up to his failures. Now, if we
can only get Steven Spielberg to do DVD commentaries!